Can you spare a nickel? I’m kicking off an experiment to see if I can raise enough money to buy myself a Macbook. But here’s the catch: I’m planning to raise the money entirely in nickels. Doing the math, the roughly $1,600 it will take to buy a Macbook works out to 32,000 nickels. So far I’ve got 6 nickels sitting in a cup on my desk. Hey, it’s a start!
So here’s the deal: I’m shamelessly asking you to toss five cents into my PayPal account. This money will not go to charity or a non-profit of any kind and is most certainly not tax-deductible. It will go straight into my pocket. You’ll get nothing in return for this, but hey, why do you care? It’s only a nickel. And that’s the whole point: I’m not asking for much—just a few seconds of your time and a nickel.
So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got a PayPal account with a positive balance, please use this button right now to throw a nickel in my change cup:
Thanks! 
Update: I’ve blogged about this again since this initial post. To follow my progress, see the following posts.
- “A nickel update” on August 21, 2008
- “More nickels” on September 9, 2008